


Year after, night before

by Ankaa



Category: Kamen Rider W
Genre: Gen, post ep 49
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21759553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaa/pseuds/Ankaa
Summary: If good things come to an end, then bad things should end somewhere too, eventually.It took only a year.
Relationships: Hidari Shoutarou & Philip
Kudos: 24





	Year after, night before

Sundown came and went, in amber glow and pinwheels creaking outside, and street lamps lit the empty streets. The late evening breeze wafts through the open window.

It's been a long day, and it felt even longer. Shotaro finally lets himself go to bed and at least try to have a proper sleep, futile as it may be.

He's exhausted and yet, same ceiling greets him when he opens his eyes for the fourth time that he bothered to count. It's still night, of the same day. Looks like he won't get any rest done this time too. But the bed is warm and he doesn't feel like getting up... except maybe to take a peek into the garage, to see how Philip is doing. He's there, he should be there.

...is he?

Shotaro remembers the bridge, Energy and everything after that, and Akiko did pinch him a few times when he asked her to (maybe with more force than necessary), so... that must be something that really happened.

He remembers everything, and can't help but smile. In any case, dreams for him are so much worse than reality is now.

Having Philip back was something he hoped for, despite hope itself, and yet... Heavy, suffocating dreams where reality was his hopeless delusion are his faithful companions when Philip isn't.

Shotaro keeps reaching out to him, with unconscious touches, and maybe excessive phone calls ("Shotaro, did you take Lost driver instead of the right one again? It may not be all that convenient to call me on the phone every time"), every call connected earns a vague, joyful kind of surprise that almost makes him forget what he was about to say. 

Just like right now, when Stagphone buzzes through the room, and lands on his bed. Shotaro reaches for it, and calls a number he knows by heart.

The garage door filters out all but the loudest of sounds. Shotaro holds his breath, and waits through every single dialing beep, unease building up until - 

"Hello? Shotaro?" 

Shotaro can hear shuffling, then the sound of a marker being capped, and can't make himself say anything, to ruin this moment. So he exhales instead.

They stay silent for a bit, Philip patiently waiting for him to say something. Shotaro's tongue feels like lead, his throat like sandpaper. He can't say a thing.

"Is something wrong? You know I can hear you breathing." He doesn't sound even remotely as tired, as bone-deep exhausted, as Shotaro feels. Sounds like he's smiling too, when Shotaro feels prickling tears cloud his vision. All of this is unbelievably unfair.

Shotaro swallows and takes a breath again. And says, as if for a first time in months,

"Hey, Philip." 

"Hi, Shotaro, were you going to call anyone else?" Philip chirps, and here are the tones he's very familiar with, curious and carefree. "At this time of...night, is it? Should I be worried about that? I would have to say, you did have plenty of time to possibly find some sort of companionship elsewhere..." 

While I was gone, and then wasn't.

But there could have been no one else. "For the past year, I've been watching you," Philip said to him on the bridge, and Shotaro believes him, he knew that before he really knew. 

Philip stops talking and lets the silence settle for a few heartbeats.  
"...so why did you call me?"

Shotaro frantically tries to remember why, indeed. 

"It's a habit I couldn't break even after a year without you", and  
"I didn't expect you to pick up, but I hoped you would" and  
"I just wanted to hear your voice" and  
"I still dream you didn't come back".

All of them are, each, a piece of a bigger truth. One that Shotaro can't bring himself to touch even now, and not in any near future. Hopefully it won't implode on him, like everything else. 

Ah, of course it will. Maybe even right now.

Philip sighs. "You know I'm still down here, right? I don't mind a few late night visitors. Only the very special ones though, of course."  
Shotaro filters out the teasing tone, and listens to the words.  
"Come and see me for yourself," is what he's saying. It's incredibly tempting, even if that's what he was doing nearly every night since Philip came back. 

No, he isn't sleepwalking, thank you very much. With stairs like that? He would have had way more problems than he needs at the moment. Like a broken leg or worse. He needs his legs well and unbroken. As well as the rest of his body, if that's not too much to ask. He believes he can do well with minor injuries, but still, he would rather not--

"No, I'm fine," Shotaro lies. "I'm going back to sleep."

For a few seconds, again, all that he can hear is monotone electronic humming.

"...if you say so. Goodnight, Shotaro" 

Philip waits until Shotaro hangs up first.  
It takes a bit, but not too long.  
_________________  
.  
.  
.  
Shotaro still can't sleep.  
It's one of those moonless, cloudy nights, way past midnight now, and he still can't sleep. 

He thinks about how in the morning he'll let Philip sleep in, if he goes to sleep at all, and prove to himself that he still has coffee-making skills, before Terui waltzes in and usurps the coffee machine. 

Things really are back to normal, huh? Philip staying awake all night, and sleeping whenever, Philip being there at all... Shotaro knows it's real, checked it countless times... and yet, just as a small hopeful part of him yearned for this, there is another one, telling him its all a lie. One day he'll wake up, and it will be all lost, never happened, empty.

They say night pulls out of you everything rooted deep, and hidden far away. Some fears never truly leave you.

Check once again,  
if he's really there,  
if these days really happened,  
if that year is really over.

Now he isn't awake enough, is too tired to watch where his body moves without his conscious input. He finds himself before the garage door, hand hovering above the handle.

It turns before he touches it. The door opens, and Shotaro shields his eyes, staggers back a few steps, suddenly blinded by light from beyond it.  
And then, with a heavy sound  
Darkness falls once again.

"Still have trouble sleeping, Shotaro?"  
Shotaro can't see the expression Philip is making, can't see him at all, as his eyes adjust back to the darkness, but just hearing Philip's voice lifts all the tension. He's here. He's really, really here. If this is a dream, Shotaro is not sure he wants to wake up.

It's the lack of sleep, it's all the nightmares, it's his exhaustion, that makes him even more emotional as usual. Not his fault. It'll be better in the morning, unless, unless --

But Philip is here, standing in front of him. Shotaro can touch him, he only needs to reach out.

He does, with a shaky, hesitant hand. He jerks it away at first, from an involuntary jolt, as his fingertips brush against the fabric he felt countless times before. And then his fingers dig into it instead, unwilling to let go. Here is his evidence and proof.

Even if just for now, Philip is really here.

Shotaro tries to fight down an ugly, relieved sob crawling up his throat. He isn't going to start crying right now.  
Sleeved arms slowly brush against his sides, and lock behind his back. Philip steps closer, puts his head on Shotaro's shoulder.

It's quiet, if not for his own frantic heartbeat.

Philip is holding him close, and he's warm, alive and breathing. And that's... what finally makes his heart overfill, and spill out everything he had been bottling up for so, so long.

With a wounded sound, Shotaro whips his arms around Philip's neck, hangs onto him desperately, and he knows, he knows he's crying - 

Philip doesn't say anything, rocks them both from side to side, until Shotaro's death grip on him gets lighter, and sobs die down to occasional sniffling.

He missed him, he missed him so much. 

"Shotaro," Philip says. "I was wondering if your sleeping schedule, or lack of it, combined with the caffeine influence, was the reason for your overall exhaustion and yet also insomnia, so I did the research-"

The moment is lost, but the warmth isn't. Shotaro missed this, too, how Philip chooses not to point out when Shotaro is a mess, but only when it really matters, and when it's only two of them.

"Of- of course you did..."  
So what if Philip can surely hear how his voice cracks, so what. He's here, and right now, that's all that matters. Maybe he shouldn't say anything.

Philip keeps talking.

"-and this can actually require some medical assistance. But i believe with proper help you'll feel much more rested and, aside from that..."

Listening to Philip is another kind of soothing. Maybe it really will be okay now. 

Shotaro idly wonders if Philip had already went through all the sleeping aids the Earth knows, and if among those there really was that unholy concoction Akiko brought to him, when she caught wind of him looking for sleeping pills. All he wanted was to sleep without nightmares for once. How he still didn't go deaf in her company, is a miracle of life. Ugh. Just remembering it makes him shudder. Osakan natural sleep remedy, yeah, right. Those little pieces still seemed to wiggle.

It's too quiet now. Philip is still holding him, but he stopped talking yet again. Shotaro blinks.

"So? What do you think?" Philip asks. "We can talk about it later, if you want, seeing how you aren't listening right now," there is no bite in his words, just a fond amusement, it's so much like you, partner, (doesn't it go both ways for them, really) and Shotaro feels even warmer inside. He could simply doze off like that.

He is a tiny bit more awake when he's being turned around a bit, then shuffled backwards, and finally plopped down on the bed, Philip sitting down somewhere near, where the mattress dips.

Through darkness, Shotaro gazes, with one eye open, in Philip's general direction.

What a moonless night.

All the color melts into gray, and whatever little light there is, makes Philip look less corporeal than he is now, less than what he can feel, the foreign-familiar weight somewhere near his ankle. Philip shifts in place, as if he can't choose the best angle to look at him. The mattress creaks.  
Tearing eyes away from him right now, Shotaro thinks, would be a crime, and he simply can't do it. There is so much he can, wants, has to tell him. Maybe not right now, but when his head is clear, the time is right. He had waited, hoped despite hope, for an entire year. All he needs is keeping calm and not embarrass himself any further.

"You are the only medicine that works for me," is what he says instead, immediately after.

Philip freezes.  
And then huffs, shoulders twitching once, twice, hand coming up to his lips.

Did Shotaro say it aloud? Oh. It's too dark to see if he'll start blushing, right? Theoretically speaking. He's going to die hight here, right how. From overheating, if not from spontaneous combustion.

"Wow," Philip says. And opens his mouth again-  
"Don't say it!"  
"Don't say what?"  
Shotaro can hear him grin. 

"You know well what i mean!-" is what he wants to say, but doesn't. A few seconds later, Philip keeps wheezing. Shotaro feels all the fight seep out of him, all at once. It's so, so great to have Philip back. 

He still throws a pillow at him. 

Philip catches it, laughing aloud now, and Shotaro can't stay mad at him. Not this time. So instead he turns to the wall, absolutely not in the way an upset child will. He can sense Philip gazing at him for a while after.

It's all quiet again. 

Shotaro regrets throwing that pillow now. He would very much like it back.

"Sleep well, Shotaro," Philip says, and doesn't move away, doesn't stand up after that. Shotaro feels something pillow-like being nudged to the back of his head, and he accepts it without a thought. Now, all is right in the world.

Shotaro neither feels nor hears Philip leaving, as he finally falls asleep.


End file.
